Pictones

The Pictones was a Gallic tribe which inhabited the lands along the Bay of Biscay in western France. In 58 BC, the Pictones felt threatened by the migration of the Helvetii toward the Santones' lands, and the Pictones allied with the Roman general Julius Caesar during his Gallic Wars; Caesar considered the Pictones to be one of the more civilized tribes. However, the tribe contributed 8,000 men to Vercingetorix's uprising in 52 BC, and Caesar ultimately quelled the uprising. The Pictones were not Romanized in depth, and they contributed their name to the city of Poitiers and to the region of Poitou. The Pictone capital of Lemonum quickly adopted Christianity during the first two centuries AD.